Our Springtime Garden Traditions

The coming of spring brings several traditions that our family loves. On the first day of spring, we head out to a local nursery and stock up on plants and flowers to set out in the yard. It's fun to fill up our cart with new and beautiful things. In addition to finding new things, we all have our old favorites, for me it's snapdragons and moss rose, for one son, it's joysticks and another son's favorite color is orange, so he fills the cart with every orange flower he sees! A few days later we will have a day when we will spend the day outside planting & potting all the wonderful things we bought at the nursery. Another tradition is what we call "Spring Day!" when we release ladybugs into the yard. Still another is planting things that butterflies especially love, like zinnias and making sure we have a mud puddle and shallow water puddle for them to get a drink of water from and a nice big rock to sun themselves on. We also plant caterpillar food, dill, for instance. It's fun to watch the caterpillars munching away on the special things we planted just for them. We always grow vegetables, but being in the southern part of the country, sometimes we plant those before spring even arrives!

~Patti D.